Petty Officer Kayla Johnson gives us a tour of the enlisted berthing quarters and talks about the more personal side of being on board an aircraft carrier for six months. Find out about relationships and BBQ’s, and take the best seat on the boat with us. It’s a sunrise like no other.

I went on a 5-day silent intensive with Lola Jones a few weeks ago. For me it was pure heaven. I have in the past done 24 hours of silence on my birthday, and loved the clarity I experienced. To be able to ignore all others and go within myself for listening, for sharing, for counsel, was very powerful. There is a lot of noise, especially in my work on the social web (twitter, etc) And much as I love it, I was yearning to talk to the divine, to God directly. I can say that the moment we dropped into silence, having prepared for over 2 weeks, my mind came alive with conversation and insight, as if I were seeing my wise best friend after a very long absence.

Curiously enough, I still became quite close to the others on the retreat. We shared the energy of this experience – far more powerful than sharing words, which fail me so much of the time. There was more to this retreat that I will talk about later. For now, I offer up silence as a way to connect with your #1 – your large self, the divine you. And then you become such a gift to others.

Updating my database: servers do it automatically every few minutes in some cases- the Internet is so smart, it knows we are constantly changing!

One of the things I am changing is feeling under-appreciated. I had this awareness that I get my satisfaction and pleasure from what I am doing in the moment. Yet I too often have front-loaded and back-loaded things with expectations. They impact the energy and the experience itself. I am choosing to give up that habit as I am a pleasure seeking person! I have re-purposed the pity pot I used to have into a compost bin where my “I am done with that” thoughts go to be reconfigured. Now I ask myself, “Rox, are things being done to you or for you?” This changes the energy in a heart beat. (Because I understand now it’s all for me. And it’s all good.)

One of the big myths floating around is that a person’s position or title is comparable to their competence. Not always true! Like me, I am sure you can think of examples. Many choices in life really do boil down to personal preferences. “Who you know” really does matter, and that is not always a bad thing. This turned out to be relevant in a discussion I was having with several other women speakers. We are all going to be presenting at BlogWorldExpo next week, where there keynote speakers are all white male. It’s an old issue, but one that is not all that easy to address. It is a combination of micro and macro energies in play. We have ideals we want to play out in the macro yet change happens in the micro of person to person relationships.

The majority of the time decision-makers go with the known quantity. This is seen by some as pandering by others as smart business to fill seats. Attendees too say they want something new, but are attracted to the known and familiar too. BlogHer is a women’s blogging conference, and founder Elisa Camahort prides herself in pro-attractively seeking out new voices for each event. And BlogHer is growing and growing – proving that this too is a viable business model.

Are you more attracted to familiar big names or the chance to help discover new talent?

We are still traveling hence the light shows this week. We filmed this last week so we would all have an extra dose of beautiful Hawaii! It’s about a different way of looking at love, using friendship rather than romance as the guide. Ever notice how we treat friends better than lovers, once the relationship has been around for a while? I think we sometimes expect too much of a partner, as if somehow love means losing me in favor of your wishes. This episode was inspired by something my mom told me – and her birthday is this weekend by the way. We’ll be honoring her 84 years of determination and self-reliance, generosity and indeed good friendship.